JESCC

Joint Emergency Services Control Centre

The Joint Emergency Services Control Centre in Guernsey (JESCC) is a unique, innovative and ground-breaking project.

It has brought call-handling and control functions for four emergency services - Police, Fire and Rescue, Ambulance and Coastguard - under one roof and is providing the community with an improved service, where the public can be assured incidents are responded to in a truly co-ordinated and multi-agency way.

To our knowledge it is the only joint facility of its kind in the world. We have received regular visits from key stakeholders in other jurisdictions keen to see the steps taken, and improvements made, while considering the potential benefits to their own community.

JESCC allows for increased co-operation across the emergency services, added resilience in terms of staffing and oversight, more efficient use of resources and a better quality of call handling for the people who matter most - the public.

It has undoubtedly helped saved lives; a bold but quantifiable claim. The technological advances made with regards responding to medical emergencies, for example, have been significant. Bystander resuscitations have been successfully performed under advice from JESCC operators while an ambulance is en-route. This would not have been possible under the previous set up on the island, as the services' individual control rooms did not have access to the same standard of software used in JESCC.

This software allows its operators to offer fast-time and potentially life-saving advice and guidance to people calling in their hour of need.